"The Jacksonville Jaguars won't be the last team to complain about the Texans playing dirty.

If you watch the Texans play, every few plays you will see one of their offensive linemen - perhaps 6-4, 310-pound Wade Smith, 6-7, 302-pound Eric Winston or perhaps 6-5, 300-pound Mike Brisiel - prepare to take on a defender in hand-to-hand, chest-to-chest football combat.

May the strongest man win? Not exactly.

Instead, the Texans on occasion choose to go low, attempting to knock the defender off his feet by throwing a block at his knees. That is a cut block.

By NFL rules, as long as it is done in the "close line" zone (between the tackles and within 3 yards of each side of the line of scrimmage) it is legal. Defensive players have always questioned whether legal is ethical."

"THE MOST TELLING part of linebacker Brian Cushing's season-ending knee injury on Oct. 8 was the deafening silence afterward. Cushing, Houston's 2011 MVP, was the fiery leader of a swarming, stingy defense that made the team an early Super Bowl favorite. He was felled on a low blindside block by Jets guard Matt Slauson that later cost Slauson a $10,000 fine."

"So why not just outlaw blocks below the knees? It's tricky, but teams really don't want the tactic to go away. That's because cut blocking works -- especially in Houston, where the coaches forbid the move in practice but use it in games. "The Texans couldn't say a damn word about what happened to Cushing because they cut more than anyone in the league," says former NFL lineman and cut-block aficionado Ross Tucker, now an analyst for ESPN.com and NBC Sports Network."